English 412 is, in its official description, “A survey of drama from 1558 to 1603, including works by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.”

In this course, you’ll read and analyze Elizabethan plays by these and other authors. But you won’t just learn particular plays; you’ll learn to read texts critically and imaginatively, for the ideas they provoke and the performances they inspire.

We’ll focus on revenge tragedies, the blockbuster genre of the Elizabethan theatre. It demanded more collaborations among writers than any other genre — famous playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare, and the letter-known Thomas Kyd, George Peele, John Marston, Henry Chettle, and Thomas Middleton. You’ll learn about their collaborations and competitions for theatre audiences, and their adaptations of ancient sources to modern contexts.